Dodie Smith - I Capture the Castle
first, "My dame hath a lame, tame crane," then "Now Robin lend to me thy bow," and then "Summer is acumin" which is my very favorite tune--when I learnt it at school it was part of a lesson on Chaucer and Langland, and that was one of the few times when I had a flash of being back in the past. While I listened to Miss Marcy's children singing I seemed to capture everything together mediaeval England, myself at ten, the summers of the past and the summer really coming. I can't imagine ever feeling happier than I did for those moments- and while I was
telling myself so, Simon said:
"Did anything as beautiful as this ever happen before ?"
"Let's take the kids some lemonade," said Neil. So we got two dozen bottles and carried them across. Miss Marcy nearly swooned with
delight and introduced Simon to the children as "Squire of Goandend and Scoatney."
"Go on, make a speech- it's expected," I whispered. He took me seriously and gave me an agonized look. Then he told them how much he had enjoyed the singing and that he hoped they would all come to
Scoatney one day and sing for his mother. Everyone applauded except
one very small child who howled and got under her desk- I think she was scared of his beard.
We left after that and the Cottons said they would drive us home.
Neil went to settle with Mrs. Jakes and I routed Heloise out of the
kitchen- she was bloated with sausage. When I came back Simon was
leaning against the chestnut staring at the schoolhouse.
"Will you look at that window ?" he said.
I looked. It is a tallish window with an arched top. On the sill
inside stood a straggly late hyacinth with its white roots growing in water, a jam jar of tadpoles and a hedgehog.
"It'd be nice to paint," I said.
"I was just thinking that. If I were a painter I believe I'd always paint windows."
I looked up at the inn.
"There's another for you," I told him.
Close to the swinging signboard with its crossed gold keys there was a diamond-paned lattice open, showing dark red curtains and a little
sprigged jug and basin, with the brass knob and black rail of an iron bedstead behind. It was wonderfully pain table "Everywhere one
turns--" He stared all around, as if he were trying to memorize
things.
The Vicar's housekeeper drew the blinds down against the sun, so that the vicarage seemed to close its eyes.
(Mrs. Jakes had told us the Vicar was out or we would have called on
him.) Miss Marcy's children were very quietI suppose they were all
guzzling lemonade.
There was a moment of great peace and silence. Then the clock struck
the half-hour, a white pigeon alighted with a great flutter of wings on the inn roof just above the open window; and Neil started the car.
"Don't you think this is beautiful?" Simon asked him, as we went over.
"Yes, pretty as a picture," said Neil, "the kind you get on jigsaw puzzles."
"You're hopeless," I said, laughing. I did know what he meant, of course; but no amount of pretty-pretty pictures can ever really destroy the beauty of villages like Godsend.
Rose went in the back of the car with Simon.
Heloise and I were at the front--part of the time Neil drove with his arm round her.
"Gosh, what sex-appeal she has," he said. Then he told her she was a cute pooch, but would she please not wash his ears his Not that it
stopped her; Heloise can never see a human ear at tongue-level without being a mother to it.
When we got back to the castle I felt it was only polite to ask them
in, but Neil had made an appointment for Simon with the Scoatney agent.
Simon is obviously most anxious to understand everything about the
estate, but I don't think the agricultural side comes naturally to him.
It does to Neil- which seems a waste when he isn't staying in
England.
"Did Simon fix anything about seeing us again ?"
I asked Rose, as we watched them drive away.
"Don't worry, they'll be round." She spoke quite scornfully; I resented it after the Cottons had been so nice to us.
"Very sure of yourself, aren't you ?" I said.
Then something struck me.
"Oh, Rose- you're not still counting it against them- what I overheard them say about you?"
"I am against Neil. He's my enemy." She flung back her head dramatically.
I told her not to be an idiot.
"But he is- he as good as told me so, before you came this morning.
He said he was still hoping Simon would come back to America with
him."
"Well, that doesn't make him your enemy," I said. But I must admit that his manner to her is a bit antagonistic. Of course, owning
Scoatney is really what is likely to keep Simon in England, but I
suppose marrying an English girl would tend to as well.
"Yes, it does- anyway, I hate him. But he shan't, he shan't
interfere."
She was flushed and her eyes had a desperate look--a look that somehow made me ashamed for her.
"Oh, Rose, don't bank on things too much," I begged.
"Simon may not have the faintest idea of proposing-American men are used to being just friends with girls. And they probably think we're
too comic for words--just as Neil thinks the English country "Blast Neil," she cried furiously. I would rather see her furious than
desperate- it made me think of the day she turned on a bull that was
chasing us. (it turned out to be a rather oddly shaped cow.)
Remembering this made me feel very fond of her, so I told her all the nice things Simon had said about her on our walk to Godsend. And I
made her promise never to tell him I had lied to him- even if she
marries him. I should hate him to know, even though I did do it to be kind. Oh, I see more and more I ought never to have let her get it out of me that conversation I over heard. It not only started her off
hating Neil, but has made her extra relentless to Simon--she will marry him or burst.
We found Topaz asleep on the drawing-room window-seat-she looked as if she had been crying, but she woke up quite cheerfully and said our
lunch was in the oven, between plates (we had it for tea). When we
finished telling her about the Cottons, she said:
"How on earth are we to return their hospitality?
I've been wondering ever since we went to Scoatney.
Dinner's impossible-with no dining-room furniture. Could we manage a
picnic lunch?"
"No, we couldn't," said Rose, "we'd only make a mess of it. Leave them alone--let them run after us."
She went off upstairs. Topaz said: "Don't blame her too much the first time girls feel their power it often takes them like that."
Then she yawned so much that I left her to finish her nap.
I got my journal from the barn and remembered Leda Fox Cotton note to Stephen inside. I told myself it was ridiculous to feel resentful and that I wouldn't even mention the note to him I would just leave it
where he would be sure to find it when he came back from work. I
thought he might not want the others to see it I felt Rose was liable to be scornful -so I took it to his room. I couldn't remember being
there since we first explored the castle, when that was the bit of the kitchen where the hen-roosts were; Father turned it into two little
rooms which Stephen and his mother had--her is just a store-room now.
When I opened Stephen's door I was quite shocked at the darkness and
dankness; the narrow window was almost overgrown with ivy and the
whitewash on the walls was discolored and peeling off in flakes. There was a narrow sagging bed, very neatly made, a once-white chest of
drawers with screws sticking out where the handles had come off, and
three hooks on the wall for clothes. On the chest of drawers his comb was placed exactly midway between a photograph of his mother with him as a baby in her arms, and a snapshot of me both in aluminum frames
much too large for them. By the bed was an old wooden box, with a copy of Jacob Wrestling Father gave him years ago on it beside a volume of Swinburne. (oh dear, is Stephen taking to Swinburne?) That was
absolutely all--no carpet, no chair. The room smelt damp and earthy.
It didn't feel like anywhere in the castle as we know it now, but as
the kitchen did when we saw it first, at sunset. I wondered if Stephen was haunted by the ghosts of ancient hens.
I looked at the photograph of Mrs.
Colly for a long time, remembering how kind she was to us in the years after Mother died.
And I remembered going to see her in the Cottage Hospital and then
helping Father to break it to Stephen that she wasn't going to get
better. He just said "That's bad. Thank you, sir. Will that be all now?" and went into his room. After she died, I felt he must be
terribly lonely and I got into the habit of reading to him in the
kitchen every night--I expect I rather fancied myself reading aloud.
It was then that he got fond of poetry. Father married Topaz the year after and in the excitement of it all, my evenings with Stephen
ended--I had forgotten all about them until I stood there looking at
his Mother's photograph. I imagined she was looking at me
reproachfully because I hadn't been kinder to her son and I wondered if I could do anything to improve his bedroom. I could make him some
curtains, if Topaz could ever spare the money for them; but the window with the ivy creeping through is the nicest thing in the room, so it
would be a pity to hide it. And always at the back of my mind I know
it isn't kind to be kind to Stephen; briskness is kindest. I looked
Mrs. Colly in the eye and sent her a message: "I'm doing my
best--really I am."
Then I thought that it would be better for Stephen not to know I had
been in his room--I don't know why, exactly, except that bedrooms are very personal; and he might not like to think I knew what a poor little place it is. I had one last look round. The afternoon sun was
filtering in through the ivy so that everything was bathed in green
light. The clothes hanging on the wall had a tired, almost dead
look.
If I had left the letter, he would have guessed that I had put it
there; so in the end I just gave it to him as soon as he came back
from work. I explained how it had come, in a very casual voice, and
then ran upstairs. He made no comment at all except to thank me. I
still don't know what his plans about London are.
In the evening, while I was working on my journal in the drawing-room, Father walked in--I had been so absorbed that I hadn't heard him arrive home.
"Hello, did your business go well?" I enquired politely.
He said: "Business? What business? I've been to the British Museum."
Then he made a dive at my journal. I pulled it away from him, staring in astonishment.
"Good heavens, I don't want to pry into your secrets," he said.
"I just want to look at your speed-writing. Do me an example, if you prefer it--do "God Save the King. "I thought he might as well see the journal--I chose an un-private page in case he was better at guessing than Simon had been.
He peered down, then pulled the candle closer and asked me to point out the word-symbols.
"There aren't any," I told him.
"It's mostly just abbreviations."
"No good, no good at all," he said impatiently, pushing the exercise book away. Then he marched off to the gatehouse.
I went into the kitchen and found Topaz cutting ham sandwiches for him; she said he hadn't told her one word of what he had been doing all
day.
"Well, he wasn't with Mrs. Cotton, anyway," I said, "because he was at the British Museum."
"As if that proves anything," said Topaz, gloomily.
"People do nothing but use it for assignations--I met him there myself once, in the mummy room."
She went off to the gatehouse with his sandwiches; he had asked her to bring them to him there. When she came back she said:
"Cassandra, he's going out of his mind. He's got a sheet of graph paper pinned to his desk and he told me to ask Thomas to lend him some compasses. And when I told him Thomas was asleep he said:
"Then bring me a goat. Oh, go to bed, go to bed." Heavens, does he really want a goat?"
"Of course not," I said laughing.
"It's just an idiotic association of words--you know, "Goat and Compasses"; they sometimes call inns that. I've heard him make that sort of joke before and very silly I always think it is."
She looked faintly disappointed--I think she had rather fancied hauling some goat in out of the night.
A few minutes later, Father came rampaging into the kitchen saying he must have the compasses even if it meant waking Thomas;
but I crept into his room and managed to sneak them out of his school satchel without disturbing him. Father went off with them.
It was three o'clock before he finally came in from the gatehouse-I
heard Godsend church clock strike just after he wakened Heloise, who
raised the roof. Fancy sitting up until three in the morning playing
with graph paper and compasses! I could hit him!
Oh, I long to blurt out the news in my first paragraph --but I won't!
This is a chance to teach myself the art of suspense.
We didn't hear anything from the Cottons for nearly two weeks after we lunched in the village, but we hardly expected to as they were still in London; and while I was describing that day it was like re-living it, so I was quite contented--and it took me a long time, as Topaz
developed a mania for washing, mending and cleaning, and she needed my help.
I had to do most of my writing in bed at night, which stopped me from encouraging Rose to talk much not that she had shown signs of wanting to, having taken to going for long walks by herself. This desire for
solitude often overcomes her at house-cleaning times.
I finished writing of May Day on the second Saturday after it-and
immediately felt it was time something else happened. I looked across at Rose in the four-poster and asked if she knew exactly when the
Cottons were coming back.
"Oh, they're back now," she said, casually.
She had heard it in Godsend that morning- and kept it to herself.
"Don't count on seeing them too soon," she added.
"Neil will keep Simon away from me as long as he can."
"Rubbish," I said; though I really had come to believe that Neil disliked her. I tried to get her to talk some more--I was ready to
enjoy a little exciting anticipation- but she wasn't forthcoming.
And I quite understood; when things mean a very great deal to you,
exciting anticipation just isn't safe.
The next day, Sunday, something happened to put the Cottons out of my head. When I got down, Topaz told me Stephen had gone off to London.
He hadn't said a word to anyone until she came down to get breakfast
and found him ready to start.
